The woman was smiling and laughing. She liked him (that was the part that really galled them). She was having fun (another concept antithetical to Leftist hearts (like the Grinch, 2 sizes too small)) with it the way he did.

Or perhaps a staffer didn't understand he was supposed to book a "masseuse", and called the hotel for a massage therapist instead. Classic misunderstanding. Hilarity ensues.

I wonder how the whole thing would have gone down if the client involved hadn't been Gore. Would she have gone to the police, feeling less intimidated by a less powerful man? Would her friends have been more supportive if the man weren't "Mister Global Warming"? She says she was afraid his security guards might harm her if she fought... if it had been an ordinary hotel guest, would she have klonked him over the head with a table lamp?

I don't think that she liked it. I think it is clear that she didn't like it.I think it is clear that Bush stopped as soon as she made it clear that she didn't like it.

I don't like being touched by people I'm not close to. I wouldn't like it if someone did that to me. But I wouldn't mistake it for sexual harassment. What Gore is accused of doing, and what Bush is recorded as doing, are two entirely different things.

The way I remember seeing it the first time, it was cringe-inducing. The way her shoulders tensed up when he put his hands on her and she raises her arms as if to push him away. It seemed like he thought it was funny and she didn't.

Watching it again she clearly sees him coming. And when she raises her arms, it's a sort of robotic gesture, and then she smiles almost as though they're sharing some inside joke.

Now I'm not sure how to classify this. Was this really a faux pas on his part or was there something more to the story?

Kos didn't make the connection! I did! I want credit for the joke. This isn't a criticism of Kos.

At the link is an article from last year: "For all the wingnuts complaining about Michelle Obama putting her arm around the Queen (a mutual act, by the way), here’s a flashback to July, 2006, when George W. Bush gave German Chancellor Angel Merkel a most unwelcome massage."

This is sooo like the leftwing media trying to excuse Obama's bowing and scraping before foreign tyrants that in order to show Bush bowed too, they put on a photo of Bush bending his head in front of a foreign tyrant, except he was inclining in order to receive a medal. Now we have a faux pas neck massage being equated to Gore's grabbing a masseur's hand to his nether region. I would think the more appropriate comparison would be to Clinton/Paula, not Bush/Merkel. But I doubt Kos would want to remind its readers (sic) of Clinton's pecadillos.